Puzzle Pieces in Mud
by Prying Open
Summary: So with the blatant pureblood supremacy in the magic world, how do the mudbloods fair?


Title: Puzzle Pieces in Mud

Rating: K+

Summary: A series of short interludes. So with the blanant pureblood supremacy in the magic world, how do the mudbloods fair?

* * *

_"It's not that your kind is contamining the magic world, Hermione. It's not as they say. They're just being bigots, like usual. It's just... different."_

When she thinks of the magic world, she dreams of wands and riding cloaks and escapes. She thinks of the narrow cobblestone alleys and the way that the buildings seem to close seamlessly, and she imagines the warm and inviting faces and smiles of the magicians.

Or, she thinks later bitterly, she used to think so. If only the dreams had remained and not evaporated like sunlight on her skin - then, maybe, this would be tolerable.

_"Just don't go outside today, Hermione - please. It's not safe."_

_"What's not safe, Ron? The store's just a block away and I have my wand..."_

So she goes when he's not looking. It's against his wishes, she knows, and she's vaguely aware of the panic that will surely ensue after her absense is noted - but she just doesn't care. Since marrying Weasley, she'd only been worried and fussed over - she'd been given curfew after curfew, until she could scarcely step over the doorway without having alarm ensue in the household. Ms. Weasley tells her that they're just being careful, but sometimes, Hermione wonders...

But, later, she wishes that she'd abided to the stupid curfews, responded better to the fuss and panic.

Here's a word that she thought she left behind in her tragic little past: Mudblood

When she returns home, short of breath and cheeks flushed scarlet with the memory of their stoic faces and taunts, Ron refuses to look her in the eye...

* * *

"What does it mean, Ron?" she asks him once, early in the morning of a day that she can't remember now.

Ron looks up at her, eyes soft and open. "What do you mean?"

"Mudblood," she says simply, and ignores his sharp intake of breath. "I hear it all the time in the streets, in stores - the whole wizarding world, Ron. I couldn't care less if it was just some weird phrase that some idiot pureblood thought would be a laugh, but... but does it mean anything?"

"Why?" Ron asks, suddenly guarded and defensive. "If you never cared before, why now?"

She sits down besides him, drapes an arm across his shoulders. She senses his anxiety, and she leans in closer. Her breath tickles his hair - and he shivers at the icy exhalation of carbon dioxide. "I needed a reality check," she says at last. "You know, we were in battles every year - It was Riddle every other day and - and looking up something stupid that Malfoy said never crossed my mind during the war."

"The mind flourishes in times of peace?" Ron asks tentatively, and is rewarded with a small smile. He's learning yet, she thinks, but learning - yes.

"You're not going to tell me?"

Ron sighs, shuts his book. "It's a long story, Hermione - "

"I have time," she notes with a smile.

She prods him gently into the direction. In the fashion of a true gentleman, he folds to his knees at her incessance. A small triumph on her part - she thinks idily - but what will it mean?

"So?" she inquires, voice soft and expectant.

So he tells her about the supremacist pureblood dogma and theory - about Alexandre and his mudblood brothers, the sullying of magic and the Triangle J.

* * *

"We used to live in a strictly pureblood society. Magic was rarer in those days, and it was thought to be much more valuable. Everyone was related to each other; you know, guy across the road, "hey, that's Uncle Nick!" and stuff, you know? But then Alexandre came along..." He pauses, hesitant.

She leans in close. "Tell me about it."

* * *

Her skin's grown unsually pale as of late. Ron seems worried, as his tan and muscular frame contrasts starkly against her fragile porcelian skin. Sometimes, he touches her shoulder with a trembling hand, as if afraid that she'd disappear - at other times, he can only bring himself to stare - she wonders if he's afraid of breaking her.

She sighs, shuts the blinds and feels the sunlight evaporate on her skin.

"Hermione," Ron breathes in a soft whisper.

Her health is fragile, the physicians warn. It's gotten to the point that Ron is now allowing her to walk besides him to work in the morning and to work in the garden to help his aging mother. She's no longer to stay in the house for such long hours - she's given freedom without restrictions at last.

She wonders how much it all matters.

"Ron," she smiles as she turns to him. "Wasn't Harry supposed to be coming today?"

"Last minute cancellations," Ron snorts in disgust, fragility and concern gone as he sits slumped over in a chair. "Prick said it's Auror stuff - but, come on, since Voldemort, we haven't had a single decent Auror not make his own schedule since."

"Whoever said that he's a good Auror? He's still new to the task force."

He stares at her. "Hermione, _Voldemort._ If he could blast that guy's brains when he was 18, he's something to reckon with, isn't he?"

She drapes an arm around him, marvels at how her skin feels cold and icy compared to his. He shivers and she frowns. "Maybe we should invite Ginny instead."

"Can't. Busy too. You wonder, you know, what friendship and family means nowadays, if you see how those gits act - "

"Ron." She cuts him off with a finger to his lips. "Stop."

She's so afraid of stepping outside...

His eyes soften and he nods. "Sorry, 'Mione," he mumbles.

So slumped, so defeated at so early an age. Hermione wonders if he made her to be the creature that she is now, or if she was the one who he's breaking himself to pieces on.

* * *

"Alexandre was a good guy. You know, not an enemy in the world and everyone knew him," Ron tells her. "And then his mother had other kids - twins. But the kids were different - not as magically powerful, sort of inept... that sorta thing. They didn't even have their father's black hair or anything. Turned out that the mother was having affairs with Muggle men."

"What happened to Alexandre?" She prodded at him.

"He went berserk. He was a pureblood; it was like your America with that North South slave issue. You know, you brought that big Muggle book and told me - Don't look so surprised, 'Mione. Of course I remember, but anyways - He killed his mother but word spread and his brothers went into hiding before he caught up to them. After a few years, Alexandre gave up looking for them."

She shivered in the cold. Wrapping cold fingers around a thin shawl, she couldn't help but notice how emancipated they looked. "Did he ever find them?"

"No, he never did. It would've been too late, anyways." Ron sighed, shook his head. "From there on, a minimal branch of magic sullying began. For some reason, Muggle blood didn't interact well with wizard's blood. It sullied magic."

Soft pinprickles of caution touched her neck, rendered her stiff and immobile. "Did it?"

"That's our Triangle J. It's a really stupid bit of wordplay - you don't want to hear it, Hermione. Really."

"Tell me something I don't know, Ron," she pleads, and catches his protests, arrests them with her words. "Please."

* * *

She remembers the first time that Draco Malfoy called her a Mudblood. She remembers the blistering heat and the striking cold of the morning - the sun blindingly white and the crisp chill of the morning setting into her bones like fire and mist.

She rememers the way that Malfoy's pale brow had scrunched up, his eyes narrowing - She remembers the way that his teeth were bared and the look of loathing in his eyes as he said it.

_"No one asked for your opinion, you filthy little Mudblood."_

She remembers the way that Ron went rigid, she remembers the soft gasp of breath behind her. The quick and decisive movement with his crippled wand, the spark of magic and the slugs.

She wonders if Malfoy had known, at that tender age, what the word meant.

She wonders if he even cared.

_"You'll be next, Mudbloods."_ This is second year, and they'd just found Mr. Filch's cat hanging on the wall. Malfoy's voice, clear and loud, that belied his pale and wan face. And yet, the word flowed so easily from his lips...

So what does it mean, Ron?

She wonders if she'll ever forget Ron's haunted look - the quick and uneasy suspicion that lit up his eyes as he spoke about the Triange J - _"It was such a stupid thing, really, Hermione." He tells her, but she doesn't believe him_ Such a stupid thing, Ron? But how pale you look when you speak of it. - and the brothers and the sullying of magic.

She remembers when she used to think that magic was clean and pure - that the wizarding world was angelic, with crisp new moons and clear skies.

Now she knows the truth. Whenever she thinks of the wizarding world, she dreams of curdled milk, alley cats walking on upturned trash-can lids and melted Swiss cheese with bubbles on the surface.

She bows her head and feels sunlight trickle in shadows across the nape of her neck.

"Hermione, dear," Ms. Weasley says softly, as she hands the girl uprooted weeds. "Take these to the bin."

Hermione nods and quietly accepts the weeds.

_No one asked for your opinion._

She looks down at the tangled weeds and the clumps of dirt that congeal the roots. She wonders how much it sullied the garden. (_Filthy little Mudblood._) She wonders if it means anything anymore, now that it's been uprooted.

_And you'll be next, Mudbloods._

She shakes her head and drops the weeds into the bin with an absent frown.

* * *

This is a very short, very sweet and blunt sort of story. I meant to make it much longer, but it works very nicely as it is.

In essence, this is a story of lost innocence. Hermione marries for love and she thinks that she leaves behind the immaturity of childhood. Instead, even her adopted family sort of believes these pureblood ideas and follows these idealogies. She hopes to find closure through knowledge; instead, the truth about Mudbloods imprisons her more than ever before. She gives up, listens to authority figures and decides to follow nothing.

In the world of Harry Potter, what does innocence mean? What does fairness and equality mean? In a world so corrupted with pureblood idealogy, how do the mudbloods fare? Not very well, I imagine.

I didn't say what the Triangle J was for specific reasons. For one, I want the reader to think. I want to give the reader some broadness with which to work. Triangles can have a number of meanings; letters, almost more so. And it's very easy to think up a number of interpretations to connect it to Harry Potter and the pureblood supremacist theories. I don't want to spell everything out for the reader; that's the philosophy with which I work on these stories.

This is it. Interpret it as you will.

Thanks for reading.


End file.
